The woman from the tree spoke to me again.
This time there was no nightmare.
We met in the dreamlands.
I knew of her from times long past.
In the beginning of all things.
I am but a watcher of worlds.
Bust she wanted something so much more.
The woman had power, more than others of her kind.
She could see the endless destinies present in the aether.
She could see me.
There are beings that seek to take control of creation: old gods, those of the feather, the queendoms of the deep.
But what she saw was so much more.
They were something different, not as powerful as the spirits she called friends. Children of a lost world.
They could possess spirits, being those of both incarnate and immaterial.
The woman told me of new warriors and old feuds.
In Bicolandia the godsblood of the ancients were battling and calling the creators of their land.
Aswang have become bold and transverse the twilight hours.
Mamam have developed a taste for incarnate spirits, painting a swathe of destruction among lands few and far between.
The cause has caused humans to raise arms against the halimaw hunting them.
The other watcher weaves through the seven worlds, what its goal? She did not know.
Even the lightlands of the engkantos were not safe. Trespassers to their ream have taken forms not seen in spirit lands.
I told her I could do nothing. I cannot take part in any sort of defense.
She asked me if I knew the other watcher. I said yes, but we have vastly different philosophies.
They would transverse the layered worlds and take part in aiding or ailing what they saw fit. Those many eyes belie millenia of journeys. Bhad Bhabie of leaks
I am but a young spirit, once of the flesh and now in the realm of the ethereal.
It was then that the woman let out a sharp laugh.
She said there were other young spirits called for destruction by the mortals.
Spirits of blood and heat, of typhoon and flood.
But the devastation they bring was noting compared to the new interlopers.
The woman in the tree called me a fool.
What good was my power if I did not use it.
So she knew what I was and what I was capable of.
It was known to her, the gods and spirits that gave me their power, right before they had perished.
I told her I made an oath not just to them, but to all the realms of the layered world.
She shook her head.
One day I will make a choice.
And with that doom the spirits.
Why must I decide? Why will it be up to me?
I am young, as a spirit I have not even sojourned to the rainbow’s lights or the dark depths of the black river.
The woman in the tree told me it was never up to me.
Destiny will fall to the destined.
The woman bade me to leave, the dreamscape had become unstable.
I will take her words to heart but I will keep my oath.
The worlds can burn.
I am merely an observer.
=——————=
Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Inspired from the Batibat myths from Maximo Ramos’ Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology. 1990
Batibat Illustration by Zon Anasus Dino used with permission from Rob Martin of Pinebox Entertainment and Secret Garden Games
